


Villainy for Beginners: In the Begining

by onewithroses



Series: Villainy for Beginners [1]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Escape, Fear, Hacking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-23
Updated: 2012-11-23
Packaged: 2017-11-19 07:52:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/570920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onewithroses/pseuds/onewithroses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The man who will be Q in five years is drenched in sweat and sprawled into a crescent against a dark stained bathroom door. He's twenty-two, still in his blue-checkered sleep pants and a hastily thrown on shirt (it's supposed to be white but he spilled take-away Chinese all down his front days ago and hasn't been to the laundry--it looks orange), and he has screwed up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Villainy for Beginners: In the Begining

The man who will be Q in five years is drenched in sweat and sprawled into a crescent against a dark stained bathroom door. He's twenty-two, still in his blue-checkered sleep pants and a hastily thrown on shirt (it's supposed to be white but he spilled take-away Chinese all down his front days ago and hasn't been to the laundry--it looks orange), and he has screwed up. 

"Cadden Stuart." 

The voice is soft and he know's its misleading--even more than the thought that the flimsy cardboard bathroom door separating him from whoever it is outside is doing a damn thing. He's somewhere between Birmingham and London and his half-cocked plan to get out of country on a metal death trap only accounted for the most ideal of conditions.

It was only then that he realized he had less than a fourth a tank of petrol and no passport. That he had left his roommate's bloody body face down in the bedroom carpet. 

And there was already another car following him. 

Or at least he thought it was following him. 

It turned out instead of the red, the sharp black car beside it was really following him. Cadden cued into this when the black costed close enough to scrape the paint off his beat up blue-something and followed him off to the petrol station.

Which is how he ended up having locked himself in the bathroom. It was the bad end of a bad idea that had started with he and his roommate trying to one-up each other in hacking their way across international government websites and databases. 

"You will open the door now, Cadden, or you won't like what follows." 

The voice wasn’t Chinese. For that Cadden was inordinately relieved. He thought he messed up first but maybe it was Thomas. Thomas. He was always so cocky. Cadden sucks in a few shaky breaths and stifles the hysterics he feels building in his chest. He studies the faucet and it’s tip, drip until he feels more settled. 

“Cadden. I’m going to count to _five_.”

Tip. Tip. Drip. 

The window across from him is too small for him to climb out of--not that he would have had anywhere else to go or anyone else to call if had managed it. He might be a spindly man, more bone and skin than flesh, but he can’t fit in something that's barely a foot long and less wide.

“One.”

He can open the door and maybe be shot or he can be shot through the door.

Thomas had been shot in the head through the window. The glass had covered the matted carpet and his blood had covered the white walls. Their apartment was on the third floor. 

They both worked IT in the same company where they spent most of their time on their own projects or a half-pence on printer jams. 

Now Thomas would be lucky if he got a proper burial. 

_Cadden_ would be lucky.

“Two.”

Cadden forced himself to swing around and open the door. It wouldn’t have held, anyway. It wouldn’t have held and he needed to see who he was dealing with. What he was dealing with.

.

This was how Cadden Stuart met the woman who would become Eve Moneypenny. She is green as gold, her hand shakes around the gun, and her hair is long and wild.

This is the only time Cadden will see her for nearly two years. She is a woman he will pair, however briefly, with fear. But she doesn’t shoot him. Instead, she drags him back to a building he doesn’t recognize and leaves him staring at plane white walls without bars. He knows he’s in a cell. 

He’s offered a job sometime later. Days? Weeks? He can’t tell. He takes it. Searches for the silhouette of the woman who had scared the crap out of him by pulling a gun at him at a trashy station bathroom as he moves from department to department to sign paperwork for his work release. 

.

Cadden Stuart’s recorded is expunged. He gets a new apartment. He still hacks in his pajamas. 

Five years later he watches his name be erased. He is twenty-seven. He takes lunches with Moneypenny and talks in 007’s ear like he’s playing a video game.


End file.
